“No.” It came out as a whisper.
“The Director requires it.”
I glanced at the steel cup sitting at the end of my bed and back to my arms, where the stripes had only just begun to heal. The welts were still red, but my skin cells were doing their job, repairing the damage, and my arms itched.
My legs and back were the same. Maybe worse. The last few nights I’d had to learn to sleep on my stomach to avoid the pain of lying on my battered back.
I thought about what the Director could do with his requirement and told the guard again, “No. I’m a prisoner, not the entertainment. Find someone else.”
“You were the best player,” said the guard. It came out almost as a plea. Like he couldn’t wait to see me in action again. He was a guard in this pit of hell, but it occurred to me that, in a sense, he was a prisoner as well. “You’re playing again tonight. Voluntarily or not.”
He had two backups in the hallway. All three were taller and stronger than me. I could fight. I would lose, but I could fight. Then what? They’d drag me into the arena, half-conscious only to be beaten again by the other two contestants. I wouldn’t fight the guards, but I also wouldn’t go willingly. They would have to do some work tonight too.
“No.”
A moment later two of the guards had me by the arms and carried me down the hall as I let my feet drag. In the cell, the leader of the three had smacked the back of my head with his baton for good measure. Not hard enough to knock me down, but now I had the start of a headache to go with my other injuries.
The game was simple. Get to the table in the center and get the object out of the arena without damaging it. The contest had been between three of us.
Armed only with thick, pliable willow switches, in order to win, one of us had to keep the other two from winning. Each of us had only worn shorts and we’d beaten each other with the willows in the effort to win the game.
I looked bad, but the other two had had to stay in the infirmary after my wounds had been treated and I’d been taken back to my cell. The steel cup I had successfully retrieved was given to me to keep. It was treasure down here.
As the guards dragged me I wondered if tonight’s prize was a matching set of utensils. What I would give for a butter knife. A butter knife could do a lot of damage.
No. I couldn’t think like that.
I had already decided I wouldn’t fight this time. Watching the two men lie in their beds, barely able to move, and knowing I was the one who had done that to them had made me sick. My conscience stung worse than the physical injuries.
In a rush, a memory of my father came back to me. It was just the two of us by the time we’d made camp that night and he’d told me the true history of our country. The fire sparked and crackled, it lit the darkness around us as my father lit a fire in my heart. The names Washington, Jefferson, Adams, and others weren’t foreign to me, but I also hadn’t known them as the heroes he had described.
He had apologized in an attempt to take the weight of generations of bad decisions and apathy on his own shoulders. He’d apologized because he knew I would be the one to pay for his sins, meaning the sins of his generation and those who’d come before him. “The sins of the fathers will be answered upon the heads of the children.” He’d said it like he was quoting something, but it wasn’t until years later I had discovered what.
We were on the run that night. We’d fled our home days earlier. By the next morning my father was dead. I’d fallen on him and watched the embers of our campfire go out. Why had he lit a fire, leading the soldiers straight to us? Within a few hours I had a new home and a family who would help me by “correcting my father’s errors.”
I acknowledged the pain in the back of my head, bringing me back to the present. My re-education hadn’t worked. I’d found a way to discover the same path my father had been on. I’d found a way to read the forbidden books.
Even if tonight’s winner would be set free I wouldn’t fight. There was more than one kind of freedom.
We reached the arena and I took to my feet as the two guards released me. I rubbed my arms where they’d aggravated the welts in their rush to carry me here.
I couldn’t see the other prisoners yet. The arena was triangle-shaped and had three doors. I assumed they were at their doors, or maybe already inside.
“Remove your shirt.”
I gave the guard a long look. “I’m not playing.”
